


A Series of Bad Decisions and Awkward Conversations

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 16:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean tries to fix Sam. Talks ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Series of Bad Decisions and Awkward Conversations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laurificus](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=laurificus).



> Written for spn_j2_xmas, for laurificus, using the prompt "Deal-making is stupid, but something offers Dean the chance to rewrite Sam's hell memories. All it means is a little sacrifice from Dean. Sam probably has things to say about that."

In Wharton, New Jersey, Dean runs into Crowley in a bar.

This is when he should walk out. But his mouth tastes of ashes. They’d burned Bobby that morning. There’s whisky behind the bar that will wash the taste away.

He sits down next to Crowley – might as well -- and orders.

“Scratch that,” says Crowley to the bartender, “Rotgut abomination. He’ll have what I’m having.” And no, Dean won’t, but the drink appears in front of him anyway and there’s no denying Crowley’s got good taste in whisky.

“What do you want?” Dean asks. It’s not like there’s a market for his soul these days, not like he can do the stupid thing and bring Bobby back.

“Not your soul,” Crowley confirms. “No offense. Hell’s all about a sound investment strategy and a solid portfolio. The martyr market’s a mug’s game. These days I’m looking for vision.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve come to the wrong shop for that.”

“Believe me, I’m aware of the tunnel effects you Winchesters go in for. But it so happens that’s exactly what I need.”

“Thought you were working up to a classic case of it’s not you, it’s me. Letting me down easy. I’d’ve been touched, if you weren’t a slimy bottom feeding demon.”

“I’m proposing a simple reciprocal arrangement. You take care of a problem for me, I take care of one for you.”

“I’m not even going to ask,” says Dean. “How stupid do you think I am? You’ve cheated us every time.”

“Something to rely on in an uncertain world.”

“The answer’s going to be no,” says Dean, “You can have your shitty whisky back.” Though Dean’s drunk most of it.

“Consider it a gesture of good will. So, tell me, how’s Sammy?”

 

They’d stuck by the pyre till it collapsed in on itself in a cave of glowing ash. Dean had stared into the pallid daylight flames till his eyes hurt. Then he’d looked over at Sam through green blotches and afterimages of flame. Sam wasn’t watching, eyes off somewhere to the side, nails digging into his palm. Having one of his little Lucifer moments while Bobby burned. For a second Dean had wanted to go round and grab Sam’s face, turn his head, make him look, make him fucking see. He was the one who was so big on _we have to face this, Dean, this is real_. Like Sam should be using that word.

But Dean had stayed on his side of the pyre, let Sam stay gone. Further and further.

They’d headed to a motel room, after, Leviathans or no Leviathans. Sam hadn’t even opened the laptop. Just sat hunched in the chair in the corner, playing with his goddamn palm. Dean had paced about for a few hours, Googled every combination of the numbers Bobby had given them he could think of, read every gossipy blog entry on the famous Dick Roman, looked up Sheriff Mills’ number and chickened out of making the call.

Finally he’d shut down the laptop.

“You want to let your hand alone before you grow hair on it?” he’d asked Sam. “Come on. Dinner time.”

Sam had blinked and looked up, given his palm a last self-conscious rub.

“Why don’t you go ahead,” he’d said. “I’m not really hungry.” He’d smiled, carefully, forehead earnestly creased. “Bring me something. The usual, right? A salad.”

And Dean should have insisted, should have dragged him out, but Sam’s eyes were flicking to the corner again, and Dean couldn’t. Couldn’t sit across from Sam and eat a burger or whatever while Sam picks at his fucking hand and waits in the Cage for Dean to get him out.

“Right,” he’d said. “Rabbit food, coming up.”

Sam was staring at him, weird and serious and distant.

“Will you be all right?” he’d said. Like he was genuinely curious.

“Yeah,” Dean had said.

“I’m fine,” Sam had answered. Though Dean hadn’t asked.

Dean had walked out, driven to the nearest bar, and run into the king of Hell.

 

“Sam’s got it under control,” Dean says to Crowley at the bar. “He’s dealing.”

“I’m touched by your faith. How long do you really think he’ll hold on? Longer than you, maybe, but will that be good enough?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“What if I made you an offer you couldn’t refuse? Fixed your stupid great ox of a brother. Glued his noggin back together.”

Dean glances sideways at the smug, oily bastard beside him. Crowley is meticulously shelling a peanut, giving it all his attention.

“Cas, old Cas,” says Dean, “Back before his God fix, he said he couldn’t heal Sam. That he wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Well, he certainly can’t now, after his watery end. And there you have it. Unless you take melting for a ringing endorsement of professional competence, maybe you should be looking for a second opinion.”

“It was Cas who got him out.”

"And then let him blunder around for a year minus his soul because he couldn't tell the difference between your brother and a sociopathic gorilla. By all means, rely on his diagnosis rather than mine."

“I seem to recall you being involved in that whole sequence of events.”

“Hey, it worked for me then. Things change. In my line of work it pays to be flexible. I know you barely have room for more than one idea in your limited cranium, but not everyone’s you. Miserable fuck of a world it would be if they were.”

“Death couldn’t cut out those memories. It’s why he built the damn Wall in the first place.”

“No more can I. Unlike some of your mostly deceased associates, I work within my limitations. What I have got is real estate. Riverfront property, ripe for development. Lethe. I can’t reboot the system, but I can spill some river water on the hard drive. Or rather, you can.”

“Wait, Lethe’s a thing?”

“Yes, you clodhopping halfwit, Lethe is a thing.”

“And it can wipe the Cage.”

“Guaranteed or your money back.”

“But there’s a catch.”

“There’s a whole ocean full of catches. I can’t promise precision. Memory’s a chancy thing. All wibbly wobbly association stuff. Sam may remember you, after. He may not. But he won’t remember hell. And let’s be honest with ourselves, it’s not like his life on the road with his brother has been a line-up of Hallmark moments, even before he took the Olympic swan dive. Could be the kindest thing, to excise yourself from his brain. Especially if you’re planning to snuff it heroically, avenging Bobby Singer.”

“Wasn’t planning on that.” Not if it means leaving Sam behind with the devil. And he’s not quite ready to take both of them out, not yet.

Crowley waves his words away.

“Right now, you and I are a marriage made in, well, probably not heaven. Maybe Vegas. But for the moment we’re highly compatible. We both want to take down Dickie bird. I want to survive the experience. You can’t be arsed to care. So I do the planning, you do the suicide mission. I’ve got a way in. It’s a good deal I’m offering. You can get the job done, have it over with, and you won’t have to worry about Sam.”

“Nice of you to care,” says Dean.

“I have my sentimental side. You lovebirds are famous in heaven _and_ hell. Purgatory doesn’t seem too impressed, but you can’t please them all.”

So Dean ends up shaking the demon’s hand. It’s fucked up but it’s worth it, to end this. Bobby pulling the oxygen mask off his face one last time. Sam back in the dark motel room, grip slipping on a fraying line of pain.

Dean’s halfway out the door when he remembers and goes back to order a salad to go.

 

It’s a week before a little cloudy bottle with a wax-sealed stopper, all fancy crystal like it’s perfume or something, arrives by black-eyed FedEx. It’s probably not luck that Sam’s not around when it comes. Dean puts it in his pocket. Five days, working a routine salt and burn, driving to D.C. to talk numerology with some rabbi Bobby knew, hustling pool in Baltimore the next night, and Dean carries it with him everywhere, dips his fingers into his pocket to touch the warm glass. Then he’ll look at Sam’s face, tracing the lines of it, over and over, like it’s him that will be forgetting.

They can’t crack the numbers. If they’re going to get Dick, it’s not going to happen this way. Dean’s going to have to do it, walk into Crowley’s trap. And he can’t do that till he’s taken care of Sam.

Maybe it will all work out. Maybe Sam will remember it all, all but the Cage. He’s been tracing the numbers these last few days, over and over, where Bobby wrote them on his hand, copying them on scraps and index cards, typing them into Google. So maybe he’ll remember those. Maybe those five digits will be the only thing. Or maybe Dean’s face will hover over them, superimposed. But Sam shouldn’t remember that, Dean’s face watching him fall into hell. Dean’s face still watching him now when he’s still falling.

They order a pizza for lunch. They’re in Virginia, Harrisonburg. Dean’s poured his whisky into a glass. Seems more civilized. Sam wanted root beer for some reason. He’s cracked the tab on the can, taken a first drink, and now he’s talking around a mouthful of pizza, saying something about a map. A map in the glove compartment. And then Dean’s alone in the room, in a wash of cool air where the door just closed. Sam’s gone to get a map, his slice half eaten, gluing itself back to the box with sticky strings of cheese, his root beer open on the table. Like he’s giving Dean his chance, giving him permission.

Dean’s got the bottle out and his hands are shaking, his blood thrumming in his ears. A little of the root beer spills when he pulls the can across the table and he turns the small crystal bottle over in his hand, like he hasn’t taken it out and looked at it a hundred times in the last few days, like he’s expecting to find directions on it this time, a prescription. Because this is medicine, right, this is the way to fix Sam. He’s going to do it. He puts his thumbnail to the wax seal. This is where he pays up and makes it right.

“What are you doing?” says Sam’s voice. Puzzled and beginning, already, to be angry.

Dean starts, like the stupidest scene in a stupid movie, and drops the bottle. A napkin wafts off the table in the draft from Dean not hearing Sam come in. Dean grabs the napkin before it can settle on the floor. Sam picks up the tiny bottle and looks at its unbroken seal.

“Dean? What is this? What were you trying to do?”

 _Nothing_ Dean wants to say. That’s sure what he’s managed to do. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Except fuck everything up.

“Look, Sam,” he says instead, “I’m trying to help, OK? I know you don’t like it. I know you think you can do this on your own. But you can’t. You can’t go on like this.”

“So, what, you’re taking over? What were you doing to me? What the fuck is this stuff and what the fuck would it do?”

“Wipe out hell, that’s what it would do. Get fucking Lucifer, what he did to you, get him out of your head, once for all.” _Save you_. Like Dean never has.

Sam is turning the bottle with its cloudy dose of Lethe over and over with meticulous, scientific curiosity.

“Where did you get it?” he says quietly.

“Crowley,” says Dean. Though it’s not like lying would make it worse.

“And what did you give him for it? Or is he in it for my good, too?”

“Nothing. Nothing we wouldn’t be doing anyway. It wasn’t a deal. Just an arrangement.”

“What arrangement?”

“Nothing I didn’t want to do. Slimy bastard pissed off Dick Roman. Now he wants him gone. Just doesn’t want to risk his delicate hide taking him out himself. He’s got a way in. He’s got a way in, Sam. You want me not to take it? Not to get the bastard who killed Bobby? Not to fix things for you, if I had the chance?”

“Fix me, you mean. Like you fixed Lisa and Ben.”

Too late, yeah. Like that.

“It was a chance, Sammy.”

“Yes, your big chance. I can see that. Your escape key. Worth trusting a demon for. Trusting a goddamn demon to muck around in my head. OK. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to undo this.”

“Says who?”

“Says me. Says the guy whose head it is. Says your fucking brother, you suicidal asshole. Tell me, did he have a way out?”

“Who?”

“Crowley. You said he had a way in, to get to Dick Roman. Did he have a way out?”

Dean doesn’t answer. Sam sets the bottle back on the table, a faint precise click, leans in till he’s breathing in Dean’s face.

“This is your mess,” he says. “This is your mess and you are going to fix it. You’re going to find Crowley and give this shit back. You’re going to bang on the door of hell’s customer service department and talk them into taking returns. And I swear to God, Dean, if you get yourself killed in the process I will not let you rest. I will raise your spirit and I will bind it to me and I will not let you go to your fucking precious obliteration till you have _fixed this._ ”

Then he leaves. Of course. Dean stares at the closed door for a few long minutes. Sam doesn’t come back. Dean doesn’t throw up. The world doesn’t end. The half-eaten pizza congeals on the table.

This is the real experiment, Dean realizes. Not what would have happened if Sam had taken the stuff. What will happen now.

They’ve still got the ritual they’d used to summon Crowley, back at Bobby’s, back when they were dealing with I-Am-Your-New-God Cas. Everything Dean needs is stowed in the trunk, unless Sam took the car. Dean can call Crowley and Crowley can do whatever to him and Dean can cross the pissed-off-Sam-binding-his-restless-spirit-so-he-can-go-on-being-pissed-off-at-it bridge when he comes to it.

Sam didn’t take the car.

Crowley takes in the situation with a glance.

“Don’t tell me,” he says. “Someone has blundered.”

“Sam caught me,” says Dean. “He’s, uh, not on board with it. So I guess the deal’s off.”

“Oh, good. So I have a pissed off Sam Winchester after my hide, I’ve got Dick Roman sitting on top of the bloody world, and now I’ve got you, bollocksing everything up just that little bit extra. Splendid.”

“So sorry I ruined your evening,” says Dean.

“You will be, I imagine. Here’s a bit of friendly advice. Your brother’s crazy as a cuckoo bird. That’s dangerous. If I were you I’d wait by that door for Gigantor to come back and I'd knock him out. I’d pour the stuff down his throat, on board with it or not, and hope for complete amnesia. But it’s not my lookout.”

“You’re right, it’s not. All I want to know is if you’re clear our arrangement is off. And what you’re planning to do about it.”

“You want to know what I’m going to do about this fuck-up? Nothing. By my calculations there’s still even odds you’ll take care of the Roman problem and take yourself out in the process. If you don’t I’ll worry about it then. Meanwhile the fallout from your fraternal _faux pas_ should at least prove entertaining.”

“You can have your Lethe stuff back,” says Dean.

“Keep it. A little memento. So to speak.” And Crowley’s gone.

Well, Dean can just empty it, smash the bottle. He goes into the bathroom and tucks it away in his toiletries kit instead. Sam goes rooting around in there often enough, stealing Dean’s razors and his aspirin, maybe checking the level of the flask Dean keeps next to his shaving cream. It’s not like Dean’s hiding it, now that Sam knows.

Sam doesn’t come back. Dean starts to get up once to turn on the light, but the switch is all the way across the room. The bedside clock glows anyway, he can see the minutes flip over.

At 2:08 AM Dean gets up to piss. He takes his flask from his kit while he’s there and opens it out of habit, but there’s nothing he wants, even that. He screws the cap back on, puts it back in beside the Lethe bottle, goes into the room and lies down across one of the beds. At some point he falls asleep.

When he wakes up he’s being shaken. Hands on him. Sam. Sam jabs two fingers into his pulse, draws a ragged breath. Dean can see him, sort of, a shaggy outline inches above his face. Then it blurs forward and Sam is sniffing at him like a dog, ducking in, licking his fucking neck.

“Jesus, Sam,” says Dean. “Get off me.”

Sam’s hands let go. For a slow minute or two more he looms beside the bed. Then he makes a noise that’s more like exasperation than anything else and Dean hears him shrug out of his jacket and kick off his shoes.

Dean lies there, heart gradually slowing. Sam’s moving around the room, undoing a zipper, clothes dropping onto a chair. The bathroom light turns on, and then it’s two solid minutes of Sam brushing his teeth. Because Sam’s a fucking lunatic, got Dean so scared, every goddamn moment, which is what Sam doesn’t get, so damn scared that this will be it, the other shoe dropping (and maybe this time it is, that weird-ass neck-licking thing, Jesus) but God forbid, with all that, God forbid that Sam should get a fucking cavity. Then it’s dark again and the other bed creaks as Sam climbs into it. Dean opens his mouth to ask what the hell that had been, to say he’s sorry. But he’s not. He’s really fucking not.

Sam’s still Terminator Tarzan the next day. He’s out, most of the time, who knows where, but before he leaves he runs his hands over Dean’s limbs like he’s checking for broken bones. Dean lets him. Then he’s gone for hours and when he comes back he ranges over the room, picking things up, putting them down, smelling them. His eyes are darting about, Lucifer or pink elephants or giant spiders. Whatever. Dean looks at Sam’s jaw. Clip him right there and Dean could still get Crowley’s potion into him.

Maybe Dean should call Bobby, get his take on this. He reaches for his phone, then remembers.

 

The third day Sam finally gets back to pissed. Like, normal pissed, not licking Dean’s neck pissed. It’s a relief.

Dean’s sitting at the table, researching some guy in Sacramento who honest to God strangled himself. Because that’s what they’ll fall back on, if this isn’t the end. Hunting. He’s reading the police report when the door crashes open so hard the frame gives a splintering crack of protest, and Dean hasn’t even got his mouth open to speak before he’s lying on the floor, his legs tangled absurdly in the chair. Sam’s standing over him like the Day of Judgment, if the Day of Judgment were fucking huge.

“So which was it?” Sam asks.

Dean lies still and waits for his nerve endings to report in. His jaw is a tight knot of pain. His head is ringing. Sam hit him. _Sam_ Sam. Stone cold sober and unpossessed. Sam’s rubbing his knuckles, breathing like he’s been running, but Dean only has to look at him to know he’s seeing Dean. Dean’s not lying on the floor because of something Lucifer said.

“Which was what?” he asks thickly. He’s bitten his tongue.

“The bait. Which of Crowley’s little lures tipped the scales for you? The chance to get yourself killed, or the chance to finally fix your fucked in the head brother?”

“It wasn’t like that. Look, I’m sorry I went behind your back. I’m sorry it freaked you out. But I’m not sorry for not buying your bullshit _I’m fine_ s. For God’s sakes, Sam, you’ve been blundering round like a bear the last two days and sniffing things. Not the way to prove you’re not fucked more than a few protein bars and an exercise routine can handle.”

Sam looks down at him stonily.

“There’s always going to be something wrong, isn’t there?” he says. “Something about me that you have to fix. I don’t think you want it different. Because if I got to be OK, Dean, if the damn protein bars worked one day, then you’d be the Maytag repairman. No wonder you were planning on taking yourself out after.”

“I’m not saying it was the greatest option,” says Dean. “I’m not saying I’m proud of it.”

And he knows he’s evading the point, but what is he supposed to say? That it was better than the scenario where Sam goes off the deep end again and shoots the wrong Dean. Better than the one where it’s night and Sam’s asleep in the car and Dean drives them both off a pier. Dean probes at his bruised jaw.

“You done with the daily walk-out and the sniff-testing stuff?” he says, “Cause I got us a hunt.”

“Yeah, I’m done,” says Sam. He helps Dean up, sets the chair back at the table, begins stuffing things back in his duffel. Dean goes into the bathroom to grab his toiletries kit. Sam stops him at the door, a hand on his chest, like he knows. He probably does.

“I’m not going to ask if it’s gone,” he says. “And that’s not because I trust you. It’s because I know I can’t. If you want to do this, erase me, like you did Lisa and Ben, then you’ll do it, one way or another. I can’t stop you.”

“Melodramatic much? I’m not trying to fucking erase you, Sam. Jesus. I’m trying to help.”

“I don’t even believe you really think that,” says Sam.

 

They’ve got a long, long drive to Sacramento. They set off with Sam at low simmer.

Thing is, it orients Dean, in a way, having Sam pissed at him. Makes everything feel a little more secure. While Sam’s clutching his grudge with both hands Dean can be sure, almost sure, that he won’t slide back into the Cage. Dean even finds himself whistling along with the music as they drive. Only every now and then Sam looks at him like Dean’s done something unimaginable.

They take care of the Sacramento thing. It’s a nasty curse, old, rooted in a heavy lump of shapeless stone worth half a billion dollars. Every time they can’t check in with Bobby about provenance and indecipherable inscriptions something stabs at Dean’s diaphragm. Sam’s back in the businesslike mode he’d perfected after he found out about Amy. It sets Dean’s teeth on edge, but at least it’s familiar.

In Breckenridge, Oklahoma, Sam and Dean take down a small pack of werecoyotes. Dean keeps count. Through the whole case, Sam says twenty-six words to him.

In Ketchum, Idaho, Sam unclenches a bit. Dean gets sideswiped by a surprisingly small, club-wielding troll, and when he wakes up to very dead troll and still alive Sam there’s no accusation in the fingers probing the goose egg on his head.

In Jordan, Montana, Sam laughs at one of Dean’s jokes.

In Chelmsford, Massachusetts they try to interview the man who wrote the book on some obscure medieval sect’s bizzaro version of Purgatory. He’d collaborated ten years back with the late, distinguished Eleanor Visyak. It’s no go, though. Alzheimer’s got there first, took the guy’s Latin and Greek and Syriac and his wife’s name. Dean stands against the wall of the retirement home and tries to look like an earnest doctoral student and tries not to look at Sam’s face. That night he takes out the cloudy little bottle that he carries everywhere, like a charm, like suicide pills, and almost, almost throws it out. But Sam had a seizure two weeks ago in a diner parking lot. Dean puts the bottle back.

In White River Junction, Vermont, they take out a ghost that’s bound to the restroom on a Greyhound bus. “Dude,” says Dean, while they’re running away because they’d had to set fire to the bus and that’s something someone is bound to notice, “That has got to be the worst place to spend eternity _ever_ ,” and Sam gives him a look that’s almost affectionate. “I guess we would know,” he says.

 

Near Hershey, Pennsylvania, Sam almost dies. Downwind from a candy factory, sugary breeze mixing with the stench of blood.

Dean doesn’t even see it happen, not really. The creature they’re after, some freaky white wild boar thing, it’s not trying attack. It’s just heading for the woods by the quickest route, and the quickest route takes it past Sam. Sam’s thrown off balance, lurches gracelessly against a tree, cursing, and Dean takes off after the boar before it can get out of sight. Can’t take him more than thirty seconds to line up his shot, get a silver bullet square in its skull. It drops with a grunt. Dean turns back to Sam because he’s not hauling half a ton of supernatural pork onto a pyre without help. But Sam’s kneeling beside the tree, hand clamped over his thigh, and there’s blood fucking spurting between his fingers, like the arc of a water fountain.

“Shit, Sammy,” says Dean, and then, “Hey, hang in there, I’ve got it,” and he’s applying pressure but the blood is a dark, slippery gloss on dark denim and the moon’s coming in splintered washes through the trees and Dean can’t see what the fuck he’s doing. His thumb slips and he can’t find where to press down. Sam looks at him for a moment, slumped awkwardly against the tree, jacket all askew, but his eyes are vague and his face is going slack, and Dean can see it draining out of him, the Cage and Dean and all the rest. This is it, Sam washing away. Dean shifts his grip and digs his thumb in harder and oh, thank fuck, the fountain of blood cuts off.

The hospital doesn’t even hold Sam for what’s left of the night. Dean drives him back to the motel, gets him to swallow a bottle of Gatorade and some microwaved broth before he’s out like a light.

Dean strips out of his bloodstained clothes and seals them up to toss, takes a scalding shower. Then he gets his kit and digs out the tiny bottle from next to his flask. He cracks the wax seal with one quick twist and dumps an ounce of muddy-looking water down the toilet. Then he goes into the parking lot, grabs a crowbar from the trunk, and smashes the dark crystal to powder.

“I threw it out,” says Dean, when Sam wakes up. “It’s gone.”

“OK,” says Sam, “Good,” and goes back to sleep. Dean sits and watches the rise and fall of Sam’s chest, the movement of his eyes behind his closed lids, scanning whatever shit channel his brain is playing.

 

In St Francisville, Louisiana they’re in a graveyard.

It’s pretty here, the kind of old world charm it’s a shame to mess up digging for bones. They can’t do that till dark, anyway. Sam’s sitting cross-legged on a tombstone, fiddling with a leaf from the big old magnolia that shadows half the graves. The leaf is brown, scrolled in from its edges like a stick of cinnamon. Sam flattens it on the tomb, trying to unfurl the scrolls.

“Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad,” he says, like this is a conversation they’re having. “Forgetting. It’s not like I would have known. That’s what I used to think dying would be like. I thought I wouldn’t know.”

“You knew that I kept it, Crowley’s potion,” says Dean, because he doesn’t want to have this conversation and he had no idea they _were_ having it, but he’s curious. “You can’t not have known. Why didn’t you get rid of it?”

Sam starts tearing his leaf methodically into strips.

“Roman orators,” he says to the torn scraps of leaf, “You know, people like Cicero, they had to deliver these long-ass speeches from memory. And they had a system for it. They’d make up, like, buildings in their heads, all this architecture, arcades, statues. Stone by stone. Point by point. So they could just walk through them and remember.”

“Because I asked you to tell me all about Cicero,” says Dean. Sam ignores him. He’s picked up another leaf, and he’s curling it around his finger.

“It kind of works,” he says. “You said it yourself. Stone one. It’s like, every day, I have to build something in my head, something to remember I’m out. Every fucking day. The same stones. It would be easier just to forget both. Forget that I’m out. Forget that I was down there. Let it all fall down. You’ve got to understand, Dean. It wouldn’t have been so bad, what you tried to do, you not asking me, if it weren’t that if you’d asked me I might have said yes. So, yeah, I knew you kept it. Maybe I was hoping you’d go ahead and use it. And I’d never have forgiven you. Except I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t remember.”

“I’m sorry,” says Dean, and he is, now.

Sam smiles at him, a small unhappy smile.

“Don’t be,” he says. “I get it, you know. It’s not like it was just fixing me he offered you. And believe me, Dean, if there were some magic potion for your thing, for that thing where there’s something coming at you and I look at your face and I don’t know, Dean, these days half the time I don’t even know if you’ll bother to shoot, if I had a fix for that, well, I can’t say for sure I wouldn’t use it. So it’s not like I don’t understand.”

It’s stupid, really, given the things they hunt, how much they can scare each other. Dean stands up. Just because Sam’s suddenly talking about shit doesn’t mean he is.

“Come on,” he says, “We’ll come back after dark.”

 

In Athens, Georgia, Dean buys his brother a drink.

He’s getting coffee in one of those college town cafés that are quieter than the damned library. When Dean orders, people four tables away take their eyes from their laptops long enough to give him the death glare.

“Plain black,” he says, “As big as you got.”

“Anything else with that?” asks the barista.

Dean glances out the window. Sam’s leaning against a lamppost, scrolling through something on his phone. His hair’s getting in his eyes. He’d said he didn’t want anything.

“You got any fancy tea stuff?” Dean asks, “Some kind of teapuccino or something?” Giving up coffee is the latest in Sam’s Less Satan Through Cleaner Living campaign. He’s taken to drinking green tea. It smells like piss and grass.

They do have fancy tea stuff. It’s downright scary, what some people dream up to do with leaves and hot water. And steamed milk and flavored syrup and God only knows what else. Dean comes out with something called a London Fog.

“Here,” he says, handing it to Sam. “It’s some gross tea thing. Freak.”

Sam glances sideways at him, wary and startled. He hasn’t taken food or drink from Dean since that day they had pizza, except when he was out of it, after his run-in with the boar. Maybe he thinks Dean hasn’t noticed. But this time he frowns for a moment at the lid, figuring out how the little tab opens, hesitates, takes a sip, and goes back to his phone.

“Thank you for the strangely hostile beverage,” he says, not looking up, and takes another sip.

Something in Dean eases a notch and settles.

 

“I wasn’t out to fix you,” Dean says. “Not the way you’re thinking.”

They’re sitting on the hood of the car a bit west of Algadones, New Mexico, drinking beer by the light of a burning harpy. They probably don’t have marshmallows.

Sam picks at the label of his beer.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you were,” he says slowly. “Well, I mean, I would, obviously. But I can see, I mean, over and over, it must get old. Your brother who’s going to go darkside. Your brother the blood junkie. Your brother who’s missing his soul. Your brother with the devil in his head.”

And, yeah, that’s kind of what Dean was afraid of.

“You’re a fucking moron,” he tells Sam. “I look at you, that stuff, that’s not what I see.” _I see you falling._ Even here, safe on the car, Sam having a good day, Dean’s stomach drops a bit, sheer reflex, every time his eye catches on Sam. But that’s not what Sam needs to hear.

“So, what?” says Sam.

“The guy who took down Lucifer. The whack job with the crappy sideburns and the shitload of fucked luck who’s still standing. Mostly. When you’re not being stampeded by pigs.”

Sam looks at him for a long, probing minute. Then he smiles, a real one.

“It was a boar,” he says, “A creature of legend. Figuring in both Greco-Roman and Celtic mythologies. It would have been a totally dignified way to go.”

“Dignified, my ass,” says Dean. “New rule: no embarrassing me by dying in stupid ways.”

Sam puts his hand over Dean’s wrist, sliding two fingers under the cuff of his shirt.

“I won’t check out on you,” he says, “Not if I can help it.”

But he can’t. Either way, slipping back piece by piece to Lucifer, bleeding out in fucking Candyland, Sam won’t be able to stop it. He can’t promise. And Dean can’t promise, next time he has a chance to get out first, next time there’s some nasty thing with pointy teeth coming at him, that he won’t let it happen.

He can fake it, though. He can fake it with the best of them.

“All right,” he says. “Have it your way. We’ll live to be cranky retired geezers. You’ll ride around on little motored carts and you’ll look fucking stupid.”

“You’ll be bald and you’ll have false teeth. At least I won’t be bald.”

“No, you’ll be one of those old guys with a greasy ponytail.”

Sam kicks Dean’s shin, smiling, sprawls back against the windshield. “You know,” he says to the sky, “I wanted to save the world.”

“Think you’ve checked that one off the bucket list,” says Dean.

“No,” says Sam. His smile is gone, he’s frowning up like he’s drilling holes in the cloud cover. “No, listen to me, Dean. I mean, with Lilith. I was so fucking furious with everything, with the universe, I wanted to save it all just to show it. To show I could. To get my fingers round something’s throat. I didn’t think, when I went in, when I went in to kill her, I didn’t think I’d be coming out, and that was OK. Best way to smash a fist into everyone’s face. Yours. My own. Break the goddamn mirror. And then, after that, well, it was on me. If anyone was going to go down with Lucifer, it was my job. I let him out.”

“Sammy,” says Dean.

“No, Dean. Shut up and listen. I didn’t think I was coming back then, either, and I did. You got me out. And I’m staying. I want to stay, even if I’ve got the fucking devil kibitzing at me in the gas station men’s room. This time I want the world saved just _because_. Because I want it to stick around. With all the shitty stuff I remember in it. And I’ve got a strong preference for you and me sticking round, too. So we’ll do it, Dean. We’ll take down Dick the dick, no magic potions, no suicide pacts.”

Dean looks at Sam. Bad things happen when he lets Sam trust him. It ends with Sam coming through, against all fucking odds, and going to hell. It ends with Sam coming back and insisting on hanging around to be a pain in Dean’s ass. It ends with Sam here to be lost again. But Sam’s fingers are still tucked warm under his sleeve, stirring a little in the short hairs over his wristbone. It’s better than Sam gone.

“Deal,” says Dean.

 

A month later, in Beloit, Wisconsin, Dean kisses Sam and Sam kisses him back.

OK, there are a few complications.

They’re not on a case. They’re holed up in one of Bobby’s old boltholes with a backup stash of books. They’re still trying to crack the numbers. If they’re coordinates, they’re not so far from here. But there’s nothing there, nothing of significance.

So Sam’s eating breakfast at a card table in an old trailer that smells faintly of whiskey and Old Spice and crumbling bindings. The smell still hurts, a complex kick to Dean’s gut every time he walks in the door. Sam’s bitching at Dean because Dean was supposed to bring him a banana along with his omelet and home fries and Dean forgot and it’s like the most important thing in the world and Sam will never be over it. And Dean’s watching him and Sam has stolen the little fruit cup that came with Dean’s pancakes, so it’s not like the problem hasn’t been solved. There’s sun slanting in over Sam’s hair and the blue plaid of his shoulder and there’s a crumb of egg by his mouth.

Dean’s going to steal it back, the fruit cup, just on principle. And Sam must know it because he’s on his guard, elbow moving to block Dean’s access while he eats. Sam. Shoveling down eggs and harping on about his fucking banana and picking the grapes out of the fruit cup with his fingers. For months, maybe years, Dean’s been looking at Sam through sheer panic, a wavering, distorted haze like heat or water. Now he glances down at the hollow metal legs of Sam’s chair, the little white plastic feet solid on hideous orange carpet, and Sam’s not falling.

“Hey,” Dean says, and he reaches across the table and Sam must think he’s going for the fruit cup, but he’s not. He gets his hand around the back of Sam’s neck and tugs him forward and mashes their lips together. It’s clumsy and off-kilter and kind of eggy and the startled _rmmph_ noise Sam makes isn’t even a little erotic.

Dean lets go and sits back to see what will happen. Maybe Sam will punch him again.

A minute or so ticks by while Sam’s face morphs gradually from stupid to surprised to insufferably noble. There was maybe a second or two of happy in there.

“That’s . . . Dean, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says at last.

“Oh?” says Dean. He’s feeling weird, giddy. A whole new kind of panic. Maybe it’s just something that he’s got to have in his system, one way or another, dealing with Sam. “You really think there’s anyone left in heaven or hell who cares? Do _you_ care? Because I sure as hell don’t.”

Sam pushes his plate away, half-eaten fruit cup and all.

“I’m fucked in the head, we know that. But, you. This is not what you want. You had a family. A real one. In the end, this is not what you want. So let’s just forget it. Just be, you know, horrifically dysfunctional brothers.”

Sam’s still got that stubborn martyr look. Dean resists the urge to wipe it off his face.

“Sam,” he says instead, because he can always fall back on violence if the reasoning thing doesn’t work.

“What?”

“Do you remember the last few months?”

Sam’s expression switches again, from noble to pissed off.

“That’s not funny, Dean.”

“It’s a little funny,” says Dean. “Seriously, after all that, did you hit your head or something? Just wake up one morning with spontaneous amnesia? Or did you miss the part where one of us tried to decide something for the other’s good and the other – naming no names here, Sammy, I don’t want to embarrass anybody – threw a gigantic hissy fit?”

“Dean . . .” says Sam. Dean sighs.

“Look, Sam,” he says, “I get it, I do. I mean, no, this is not what I want. I want you to not have Lucifer in your head. I want you to not have gone to hell. I want my goddamn fruit cup back. I want Bobby alive, so’s I could tell him how fucking creepy those cat-wagging-its-tail clocks are. And I’m not getting that. You’re not getting that. But this, us, fucked-up us, remembering the shit that we remember, I want that. And I’m not helping the fucking universe wipe it out. Not any more.”

Things can still get bad. Things can still get so fucking bad. Just yesterday Sam had spaced out at the reference desk at the college library, and when Dean had come up to jostle his shoulder and smile apologetically at the librarian he’d caught a glint of silver on Sam’s palm. Five staples, lined up precisely, driven in along the line of the scar like stitches. Sam’s a fucking mess. And Dean, it’s all been sliding for months, in treacherous trickles and crashing avalanches, Lisa and Ben and Sam and Cas. Bobby. But Sam’s here, miraculously, in the rubble. Building houses in his head. Not falling. And Sam wants to stay. Maybe they both want to stay. Dean holds his breath.

Sam reaches across the table, runs his thumb along Dean’s cheekbone like he’s memorizing it, fixing it in his mind.

“I’m keeping the fruit cup,” he says. Then he kisses Dean.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Series of Bad Decisions and Awkward Conversations [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4886896) by [glovered](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glovered/pseuds/glovered)




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